Mary’s Information Ecosystem

Sadly, I am not one of those people for whom organization comes naturally. At one time I thought of myself as a whirling piece of chaos. It’s not that I approved of this, or wanted it, but things just seemed to spin off that way out of my control. My mind is also the kind that sees the big picture but can be oblivious to details, and I like to think I’m the creative type. For those familiar with Myers-Briggs personality typing, I score high on both intuition and perception. I’m envious of my co-blogger Crystal who manages to be both creative and organized.

I finally realized that work was a place I could be better organized, and I’m slowly working on it. My email is now much better organized than it was, with folders and subfolders.

As a librarian, I don’t do a lot of original research. I get to know about a lot of research tools (you should see my page of Google Alerts and my RSS feeds – Oy Vey!) but tend to focus on the forest rather than the trees. For example, I’ve used Zotero for a project or two but am by no means a power user knowing all the tricks and nuances.

Evernote I am using and loving, learning to be a power user. So far I have used it more for my personal life. For example it is marvelous for storing information about an upcoming appointment at a place I’ve never been. I save the name, phone number, and directions/map, and have it all accessible in the Evernote app for my smartphone. We have been using it to organize our plans for this blog, and have a notebook for ideas for new posts. So it is evolving into more of a tool for work life as well as home life.

It may seem odd, but I consider LibGuides, the software for creating research and class guides, a part of my information ecosystem. As a librarian, it is how I package information for the use of my students and faculty in my liaison areas, and this is much more a part of my job than doing original research. We have around 16 subject librarians at my university, but I’ve probably published half or more of the research guides. In part it is because I’d rather do a set of related guides than have three or four rows of tabs (pages) on one guide. Partly it is because two of my liaison areas, Public Policy and International Affairs, have many great web-accessible sources. Another factor is that I was responsible for training other librarians on using the software, so I had to jump in and use it. So now if a professor wants a session on using library resources for her class, it is a snap to spin up a LibGuide to use as a framework for teaching the session and something the students can use to jump start their research.

If PKM is only about managing the amount of information one absorbs, LibGuides doesn’t count. But if PKM includes the tools one uses to be productive, and in my mind it does, LibGuides is a top tool in my information ecosystem.

I have also recently begun to use mind mapping. I am not an expert yet, but was shocked at how well a mind map brough clarity to the organization of an article being written. I used Mindjet Connect, because it is free, web-based, allows links and attachments, and exports to Evernote.